Digital Certificates

Digital Certificates

We do most of our transaction digitally right from our Banking transaction to our Mobile eCommerce transaction, or IOT based transaction etc., hence to do a secure digital transaction we use the digital certificate. Digital Certificate is a certificate issued by a Certification Authority validating the individual or organisation. The Certificates validates that a website or mobile transaction platform is trusted and safe.

Some of the important things to look out are:

-  Who issued the certificate?

-  Who the certificate is issued to.

-  Valid to

-  Public Key 

-  Digital Signature.

Certificate are used for identification and encryption which grants the right to access information or other services online. It includes ensuring the identity of all parties involved. They include public key that is used of encryption of data like email document, secure web transaction etc.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI): As mentioned above PKI is also known as trusted hierarchy, public key infrastructure is a system of Digital certificates, Certification Authorities (CA’s) and other registration authorities (RA’s) used to verify and .authenticate the validity of parties involved in an internet transaction.

Digital Signature: A Digital Signature is based on asymmetric cryptography. Digital Signature has a Hash function which represents the digital signature which is mathematical value for that certificate. It’s a one-way process using a private key to generate a digital signature, the same can be checked by using a public key for Decryption which again is a mathematical value and outcome should be the original Hash value which would ascertain that the certificate is not altered or damaged. If the hash value is not correct, it would mean that the certificate is corrupt or is tampered with. 

A private key is paired with the Public key; however, the private key is stored separately.

A certificate includes the certificate holder's public key, information about individual, computer, or organisation to which the certificate is issued, information about certification authority (CA), the date of issue and expiry of certificate and the serial number of certificate.

Certification Authority: Certificate is essentially a file with data in it. Hence the trust model work in certification to validate the data and Certification Authority role is important. The Certification Authority does the checks before issuing the certificate and that it’s trusted. The Certification authorities certify and create an electronic document that is a Digital certificate that verifies individuals and organization are who they say they are. Hence is also important that Certification Authority is also a Trusted Source. The organization can have an additional level of certification authority normally followed is Root SA and child SA trust model. 

A CA essentially is a hierarchical system composed of software, hardware, procedures, policies and administrators who validate the request and generates certificates. 

Now with sources of the transaction happening over Mobile & IOT apart from Web Digital Certificate has high importance for security while we do digital transactions.